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A teaching manifesto
Apr. 8th, 2009 09:16 amUnrelated: I got my replacement mug from Bulldog News in the mail on Monday. It was wrapped in a copy of the Seattle Weekly. Life feels civilized again with the new mug. I took the old one with me everywhere, I'm realizing.
Yesterday while teaching I reached one of those moments where I could speak directly to my students about a subject that I think is critical for all people to know and think about: human population growth. One of the greatest things about speaking about a subject that I am passionate about is that I can see my students listening to me differently. Suddenly, they sit up and pay attention--even the ones who usually sit in the back with their eyes partly glazed over. Their brows furrow and they start to formulate all kinds of questions.
We've also reached a point in the semester where we're spending more time thinking about and working on understanding the scientific method, which is to say, how science is done (at least one way of doing it). That has opened up another realm of discussion about the effects and purposes of education, which my students are also keenly interested in, across the board. [I think they can't help but reflect on it, even the students who don't really know why they're in school.] At the beginning of the semester, I toyed with the idea of introducing my students to my teaching philosophy, but I ended up merely hinting at it in my syllabus when describing the purpose of the course, because I haven't spent enough time to really articulate it clearly and concisely.
So, what is my teaching philosophy? Well. It centers on two different main ideas, which actually largely stem from my experience as an undergraduate, especially from learning to tutor students in writing across multiple disciplines. My first idea comes from my understanding of the purpose of a liberal arts education, which I see as two-fold: to introduce students to a broad range of different ways of thinking about and interacting with the world (general educational requirements), and to teach students in great depth about one (or at most, two) specific discipline(s). Understanding a specific discipline involves both learning about the history and breadth of knowledge within the discipline, and learning how to communicate using the language and conventions specific to the discipline. Adequate mastery of a discipline requires an introduction to and familiarity with the overall subject matter, as well as in-depth exploration of multiple particular aspects of the subject. The culmination of this process, for students who achieve mastery, is to learn how to make independent, direct contributions to the discipline.
The second idea relates to what constitutes knowledge, and the value of different types of knowledge. Current technologies, if used well, provide people with access to a tremendously overwhelming amount of information. The purpose of an education, in part, is to provide people with the necessary resources to work through this information and come to understand it and think about it (=knowledge). Specific courses are structured to do just this for specific subject areas. The most critical component of working through such information is developing the ability to think critically and carefully about sources of information--how we know what we know, and what we do not know (thanks, Confucius)--both the expanses and limits of our knowing. For example, in the biological and behavioral sciences, much of our knowledge is derived from following a specific reasoning pattern--hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Awareness and mastery of this reasoning pattern provides individuals with a starting framework for approaching, understanding, and predicting patterns in the world, and for making decisions about how to live. Ultimately, that is the purpose of knowledge.
My role as a teacher, then, is to help students develop these skills, by engaging in a dialogue that draws upon students' natural curiosity and my own developed expertise to encourage creative and independent thinking.
---
Anyway, hopefully that is relatively clear. My ability to focus on this is rapidly dwindling at the moment, but if you get the idea and have a reaction or other form of feedback, please share it. I think this ever-evolving philosophy is going to be best shaped through ongoing discussions with all of you.
Also: Aside from these occasional verbiose outbursts, I'm feeling a sense of quietude at the moment--which is to say, there's a lot floating around in my subconscious these days that's not making it all the way to my consciousness and getting verbalized. C'est la vie.
Yesterday while teaching I reached one of those moments where I could speak directly to my students about a subject that I think is critical for all people to know and think about: human population growth. One of the greatest things about speaking about a subject that I am passionate about is that I can see my students listening to me differently. Suddenly, they sit up and pay attention--even the ones who usually sit in the back with their eyes partly glazed over. Their brows furrow and they start to formulate all kinds of questions.
We've also reached a point in the semester where we're spending more time thinking about and working on understanding the scientific method, which is to say, how science is done (at least one way of doing it). That has opened up another realm of discussion about the effects and purposes of education, which my students are also keenly interested in, across the board. [I think they can't help but reflect on it, even the students who don't really know why they're in school.] At the beginning of the semester, I toyed with the idea of introducing my students to my teaching philosophy, but I ended up merely hinting at it in my syllabus when describing the purpose of the course, because I haven't spent enough time to really articulate it clearly and concisely.
So, what is my teaching philosophy? Well. It centers on two different main ideas, which actually largely stem from my experience as an undergraduate, especially from learning to tutor students in writing across multiple disciplines. My first idea comes from my understanding of the purpose of a liberal arts education, which I see as two-fold: to introduce students to a broad range of different ways of thinking about and interacting with the world (general educational requirements), and to teach students in great depth about one (or at most, two) specific discipline(s). Understanding a specific discipline involves both learning about the history and breadth of knowledge within the discipline, and learning how to communicate using the language and conventions specific to the discipline. Adequate mastery of a discipline requires an introduction to and familiarity with the overall subject matter, as well as in-depth exploration of multiple particular aspects of the subject. The culmination of this process, for students who achieve mastery, is to learn how to make independent, direct contributions to the discipline.
The second idea relates to what constitutes knowledge, and the value of different types of knowledge. Current technologies, if used well, provide people with access to a tremendously overwhelming amount of information. The purpose of an education, in part, is to provide people with the necessary resources to work through this information and come to understand it and think about it (=knowledge). Specific courses are structured to do just this for specific subject areas. The most critical component of working through such information is developing the ability to think critically and carefully about sources of information--how we know what we know, and what we do not know (thanks, Confucius)--both the expanses and limits of our knowing. For example, in the biological and behavioral sciences, much of our knowledge is derived from following a specific reasoning pattern--hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Awareness and mastery of this reasoning pattern provides individuals with a starting framework for approaching, understanding, and predicting patterns in the world, and for making decisions about how to live. Ultimately, that is the purpose of knowledge.
My role as a teacher, then, is to help students develop these skills, by engaging in a dialogue that draws upon students' natural curiosity and my own developed expertise to encourage creative and independent thinking.
---
Anyway, hopefully that is relatively clear. My ability to focus on this is rapidly dwindling at the moment, but if you get the idea and have a reaction or other form of feedback, please share it. I think this ever-evolving philosophy is going to be best shaped through ongoing discussions with all of you.
Also: Aside from these occasional verbiose outbursts, I'm feeling a sense of quietude at the moment--which is to say, there's a lot floating around in my subconscious these days that's not making it all the way to my consciousness and getting verbalized. C'est la vie.
